Military Defeats Handed Out In Divorce Court

June 09, 1989|By David Evans.

WASHINGTON — In 1982 Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D., Colo.) was instrumental in pushing a law through Congress that said military retirement pay could be divided in a divorce just like property. This meant that in those states like California, where divorce courts routinely split property down the middle, former spouses had a claim to their ex-mate`s military retirement pay.

The law affected an estimated 750,000 retired military personnel who are divorced.

The intent of Schroeder`s law was to provide support for ex-wives who were left virtually penniless by their husbands.

``A marriage is an economic partnership, and we had women out on the streets with nothing after 19 years of marriage; where`s the fairness?``

Schroeder declared in a recent interview.

She has a point, although since 1975 the military services have been authorized to deduct from a service member`s active duty and retirement pay to meet alimony and child-support payments.

The fine print in Schroeder`s law went further. Military divorcees now are legally bound to pay former spouses up to half their retired pay for the rest of their lives. They`re required to pay even if the former spouse remarries and even if the divorce took place a decade or more before the act took effect.

Consider the case of Dorothy Cook, a California resident, age 71, married for 23 years to a retired Navy chief petty officer, her second husband.

``Last month he was served with a lawsuit by his ex-wife of 24 years ago. She wants half his $920-a-month retired pay; she wants half of everything he has collected from the time he retired in 1967; she wants future payments until he dies. She receives . . . an annuity from her deceased second husband amounting to $1,500 a month,`` she wrote Sen. John Glenn (D., Ohio) last month.

A retired admiral is fighting a bitter court battle to hold onto half the retired pay now claimed by a wife divorced 25 years ago, including makeup payments on all retirement payments made since 1984. The California judge, bound by the federal law to treat retirement pay as property, wrote a sympathetic opinion of the admiral`s plight. ``He has relied on the income as his own and is now going to be required to completely retool his cost of living to get by on half.``

The law also affects divorced military personnel on active duty. An Air Force major, a test pilot with more than 5,000 hours in the air, was divorced in California in 1987. The court said that when he retires from the Air Force after 20 years in 1996, his former spouse will receive a quarter of his retirement pay as a lieutenant colonel or colonel.

``She`s getting the benefit of my going from captain to colonel. Why should I build equity in my career just so she can get a portion when she wasn`t around?`` he asked.

This officer, in which the Air Force has invested about $6 million in education and flight training, says the former-spouse law ``has greatly reduced my desire to stay in the Air Force.``

Provoking $6 million men like this pilot to leave the service may be counterproductive. Indeed, other federal agencies offer more equitable safeguards for both parties of divorce. Former spouses of civil service employees have rights to their ex-mate`s retirement, but only in divorces since 1978.

Divorced spouses of CIA and Foreign Service officials can claim up to half their ex-mate`s retirement, but the benefit is not paid to former spouses under age 50 or those who remarry before age 55. Moreover, the regulations state, ``This is a special retirement annuity which is not taken out of the annuity of the employee.``

In other words, the taxpayers are picking up the tab for support.

Schroeder said she crafted her law the way the military services wanted it written. Two retired colonels who were involved in this issue as Army staff officers in 1982 said the services opposed defining retirement pay as property.

Legalisms aside, there may be ways to provide more equitable support arrangements under the former-spouse law. It could be modified to cover only those divorces that have occurred since 1982, when the law was enacted, and any monies paid under its original retroactive provisions would not have to be returned. Rep. Robert Dornan (D., Calif.) proposed last January that treating military retirement pay as property should terminate ``upon remarriage of the former spouse.``

Schroeder said she is flatly opposed to any such alterations. She says the inequities result from state divorce laws, not the actions of Congress. What she doesn`t say is that her law classifying military pensions as property set the conditions for the states to inflict these inequities.